It’s time for SQL in the City 2016 to start today. Actually, by the time some of you read this, we may already be underway. This year the event is being broadcast from the Redgate Software offices in Cambridge, UK. Along with Grant Fritchey and a number of other Redgaters, we’re holding our annual conference live for the world to watch. In fact, to ensure everyone can watch, we’re going to broadcast both today and tomorrow (Dec 15) at different times to reach the entire world. If you can’t tune in today, come back tomorrow as the content is the same, just about 4 hours later. That means an early day in the office for me today, and then a late one tomorrow, but it’s worth it to give you a fun show.

I’ve enjoyed being a part of SQL in the City for many years, in quite a few cities around the US as well as London. Each year we spend time trying to showcase new products and features from Redgate that can better help you develop software. That’s the mission at Redgate. We want to make you more productive as you build applications on top of SQL Server. Part of doing that is showing you examples and providing education in addition to selling software.

As an evangelist, I’ve been proud that Redgate continues to give back to the community and invests heavily in SQLServerCentral, Simple Talk, and many other conferences and events around the world. We truly do want to be a part of the #sqlfamily and try to ensure that every one of us gets better at our job over time. To me this is one of the great things about the SQL Server community in that we all support, inspire, assist, and share with each other. I’m happy to help contribute what I can to educate SQL Server professionals every day.

This should be a fun couple of days, and I hope you enjoy the sessions we’ve been developing this fall. We’ve got some great new products that have been under development in 2016 and should be releasing soon. I think you’ll like what we’ve been working on.